They experienced a very complicated situation with many flight diversions

Aeronautical chaos due to the cold drop in Spain and the great work of air traffic controllers

Esp 10·31·2024 · 21:03 0

The catastrophe caused by the cold snap in several regions of Spain also had serious effects on civil air traffic.

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Planes and helicopters cannot fly in certain extreme weather conditions. In this video published by AEMET we can see Meteosat images showing the weather situation in Spain between the night of October 28 and the afternoon of the 29th:

ENAIRE, the state agency that manages air navigation in Spain, stated on the night of October 29-30:

"La DANA ha causado enormes dificultades en la gestión del tráfico aéreo en el Este peninsular. La activación de regulaciones, los vuelos en espera y el desvío de aeronaves ha sido frecuente en las aproximaciones a los aeropuertos de Valencia y Madrid en las últimas horas de la jornada.

ENAIRE controllers and technicians have worked hard to ensure the safety of the operation despite the difficult weather conditions and problems with access to the facilities."

We can get an idea of ​​the effects of the cold snap with this video posted on Twitter by @controladores on Tuesday night, October 29, showing the "crazy afternoon" they had at the ENAIRE Control Center in Valencia, "managing multiple crew diversions to alternative airports due to storms in the east of the peninsula that have hit Valencia airport."

Here we can see another video from @controladores showing the work of the air traffic controllers in Malaga and Seville that same day: "they had to bring order to the chaos of the arrival and departure routes at Malaga airport by coordinating flight by flight to facilitate takeoffs that were continually diverted, affected by the storms that were located for several hours north of the airport."

On the morning of October 29, Malaga Airport was already registering many aborted flights due to inclement weather, as we can see in this video from @meteo365_es:

Below these lines we can see another video of Malaga Airport published by @controladores which shows the situation on Tuesday, October 29 at noon, with many delays due to bad weather and a maximum alert for lightning, which is why refueling operations had to be restricted. The video clearly shows the amount of water that was already on the runways and platforms, due to the rain that fell in the previous hours:

On Tuesday night, Valencia Airport published this video recorded from the Air Nostrum hangar, showing the flooding of its platform due to heavy rains:

This afternoon, aerospace engineer Sergio Hidalgo has published an interesting video analysing the diversions suffered by some flights due to the strong winds that were being recorded at the airports of Madrid and Valencia (the video is in Spanish, you can activate automatic English subtitles in the bottom bar of the player):

The great news is that there were no accidents despite the extremely harsh weather conditions that Spain suffered during those hours, a situation that caused serious damage to roads and railways. We must recognise and applaud the great work that the air traffic controllers have done in the midst of this chaos. Thanks to them, an extremely complicated situation was successfully managed.

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Main photo: ENAIRE. The Valencia Control Center.

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